This invention relates in general to packaging, and more particularly to a machine for packaging small solid objects such as medicines that are in the form of pills, tablets, and capsules.
Hospitals and nursing homes administer large quantities of medicines in the form of pills, tablets, and capsules to their patients, and as a consequence find it economical to purchase such medicines in bulk quantities. Indeed, most hospitals maintain their own pharmacies for purchasing the medicines and distributing them to their patients.
Some hospitals and nursing homes merely place each patient's medicine in a small cup which is delivered to the patient's room. This is not entirely satisfactory because of the danger of contamination and of confusing the medicines of different pateints. The more desirable approach is to seal the pills, tablets, and capsules in packages, each bearing the name of the particular medicine that is within the package. Since the package is not opened until it reaches the patient's bedside, the chance of contamination is reduced significantly. Also, by reason of the fact that the packages are individually marked, one can compare a patient's medicine with the patient's prescription immediately before the medicine is administered, and this greatly reduces the chance of the patient receiving the wrong medicine.
Machines currently exist for individually packaging pills, tablets, and capsules at pharmacies, but these machines continually need adjustment and are not very reliable. Moreover, they do not operate very quickly, so that packaging process is somewhat time-consuming. In this regard, one machine of current manufacture enables pills, tablets, or capsules to be displaced from a tray into pockets formed in a paper strip and thereafter seals a transparent strip over the pocket, thereby capturing the pills, tablets, or capsules in the pockets. The machine advances the paper strips past a forming station where the pockets are produced, a loading station where the pills, tablets, or capsules are loaded, and a heat sealing station where the transparent strip is secured. It also advances the strip with the pills, tablets, or capsules embedded in it past a cutting station where the strip is severed into individual packages, each containing a single pill, tablet, or capsule. It is not uncommon for the cutter of this machine to drift out of phase with the advancing mechanism for the strips so that the strips are not severed precisely between successive pockets. In this regard, the machine utilizes cams to operate various mechanisms, and the cam followers at some of these mechanisms are spring loaded so they can turn the camshaft once the power to it is released. Moreover, the drive mechanism uses a one-way clutch. Thus, if the power is shut off, the clutch will accommodate any backslip of the drive mechanism without moving or otherwise disturbing the overlying strips, but when the machine is restarted, its drive mechanism will no longer be synchronized with the cutting mechanism in the sense that cuts are made midway between successive pockets. Also, the machine is capable of loading pills, tablets, or capsules only into a single row of pockets, and therefore operates relatively slowly. Furthermore, the machine tends to agitate the strip in which the pockets are formed, sometimes displacing the pills, tablets, or capsules from their pockets or disrupting the heat sealing mechanism. A machine of this type is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,068,448.